d so we go on in our
waste of money and energy and life. The waste of soil, the waste of
tools, in our farming communities, doesn't compare with this waste in
seriousness. Let us adopt the principles of scientific conservation.

And now, in keeping with the topic given me to discuss, "Improvement in
Our Public Schools," I have given three quite definite suggestions: In
the first place, I have recommended the utilization of the Press as an
agent of improvement. That is, I have asked that there be established in
one or both of your daily papers an educational column in charge of some
competent person thru which the public could become better informed on
school matters and thus able to co-operate more intelligently in the
upbuilding of the schools. In the second place, I have urged that
mesures be taken looking toward the adoption of regular and systematic
medical inspection of all school children. And lastly, I have urged you
to look upon your superintendent of schools as an educational expert
rather than a business man. And, regarding him as such, I have asked you
to free him from the petty details of office work and all mechanical
drudgery so that his training and his abilities could be used for
educational betterment.

VIII

LOCAL WINTER SPORTS

_A Paper read before the Franklin Club of Grand Forks, North Dakota,
December 1, 1910, and printed in the Grand Forks "Daily Herald,"
December 4, 1910_

It is no longer necessary to offer an extended plea for a recognition of
the value of physical training. The human race, in its upward climbing,
long ago passed the stage where the body was looked upon as a hindrance
to the soul in its aspirations. We have likewise gone beyond that higher
stage in which the attitude toward the physical being was merely
negative, and have clearly reached an altitude upon which we recognize a
well-defined relationship between the physical man and the mental and
spiritual man. We know now that only as each is healthy and thus in a
condition to do its own work well, is the other able to act normally. As
the great English philosopher, Locke, said, "A sound mind in a sound
body is a brief but full description of a happy state in this world."
This is a well-recognized article of our educational creed, not only,
but even the conservative religious workers have accepted the principle,
and we find inscribed over the entrances to our Christian Association
buildings the word "body" as well as